s it were, upon a steadily moving scroll. The music of the
unfamiliar names that occurred in his recital was a stimulant to the
poet's imagination. Presley had the poet's passion for expressive,
sonorous names. As these came and went in Vanamee's monotonous
undertones, like little notes of harmony in a musical progression, he
listened, delighted with their resonance.--Navajo, Quijotoa, Uintah,
Sonora, Laredo, Uncompahgre--to him they were so many symbols. It was
his West that passed, unrolling there before the eye of his mind:
the open, heat-scourged round of desert; the mesa, like a vast altar,
shimmering purple in the royal sunset; the still, gigantic mountains,
heaving into the sky from out the canyons; the strenuous, fierce life
of isolated towns, lost and forgotten, down there, far off, below the
horizon. Abruptly his great poem, his Song of the West, leaped up again
in his imagination. For the moment, he all but held it. It was there,
close at hand. In another instant he would grasp it.

"Yes, yes," he exclaimed, "I can see it all. The desert, the mountains,
all wild, primordial, untamed. How I should have loved to have been with
you. Then, perhaps, I should have got hold of my idea."

"Your idea?"

"The great poem of the West. It's that which I want to write. Oh, to
put it all into hexameters; strike the great iron note; sing the vast,
terrible song; the song of the People; the forerunners of empire!"

Vanamee understood him perfectly. He nodded gravely.

"Yes, it is there. It is Life, the primitive, simple, direct Life,
passionate, tumultuous. Yes, there is an epic there."

Presley caught at the word. It had never before occurred to him.

"Epic, yes, that's it. It is the epic I'm searching for. And HOW I
search for it. You don't know. It is sometimes almost an agony. Often
and often I can feel it right there, there, at my finger-tips, but I
never quite catch it. It always eludes me. I was born too late. Ah, to
get back to that first clear-eyed view of things, to see as Homer saw,
as Beowulf saw, as the Nibelungen poets saw. The life is here, the same
as then; the Poem is here; my West is here; the primeval, epic life
is here, here under our hands, in the desert, in the mountain, on the
ranch, all over here, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe. It is the man who is
lacking, the poet; we have been educated away from it all. We are out of
touch. We are out of tune."

Vanamee heard him to the end, his grave, sad face